Most people who want a digital point and shoot camera already have one, so manufacturers this year have to be more creative to make sales.

You can find a camera with a decent zoom and LCD preview for under $200 without breaking a sweat.   The average price of a digital camera this year, is $157, says researcher IDC. But if you want a little something extra with your megapixels, take a look at one of these three models.

--Turn me on, I'm a projector. Nikon's $429 CoolPix S1000pj has a 12 megapixel sensor and 5X zoom lens -- but wait, there's more! The camera also has a built-in projector.

Imagine this: You're having a great time at the office party and want to show off your photographs. Take the gang into a darker area, turn down the lights, click on the slideshow feature on the camera and the projector and display your images onto a blank wall.

Just don't expect the same quality as from business-class projectors, which sell for $500 and up and are measured by the amount of lumens, or light that emits from the unit.  Nikon's camera is 10 lumens.  Epson's S6 projector, which sells for around $500, has 2200 lumens.

--  Taking Rugged to new depths. Olympus pioneered the concept of the "rugged" camera -- waterproof, crushproof and freezeproof -- which we have tested on our Talking Tech video show.

Panasonic and Canon have joined the fray with similar models, and now watchmaker turned camera manufacturer Casio is there as well, with the $299 EX-G1.

The camera is modeled after Casio's G-SHOCK watches, and promises to be waterproof and shock-resistant. Casio says the camera can be dropped as high as seven feet and still survive, and be dumped 10 feet underwater for as long as 60 continuous minutes.

-- No tripod or self-timer needed. How many times have you been on vacation and held the camera up to get a shot of you and yours, hoping you both make it in the frame? Naturally, one of your faces is cut off in the final photo.

Samsung has the camera for you.  The $349.99 TL225 is the first point and shoot with 2 LCD screens.  There's one on the back, like always, along with a smaller one in the front, near the lens.

It's also a fun feature that kids love.  But you ll pay a good $150 to $175 more for this camera than an average point and shoot.

By Jefferson Graham
Photo: The CoolPix projector camera. (Nikon)

Baig: Barnes & Noble's e-reader arrives with wrinkles ... Achieving freedom from cable ... Apple to reboot iTunes for the Web ... A closer look at Facebook's privacy controls ... AOL split from Time Warner becomes official today ... An app that's like Yelp for dogs ... Five business tips for using video ... The influence of social networks on holiday shopping ... Finally, a battery to wear on your wrist.

By Brett Molina

If you're already thinking about your 2009 tax return, you can get a free answer to a personal tax question from experts at TurboTax, the nation's largest provider of tax software.

To participate, submit a question online at www.freetaxquestion.com. You'll receive a call back at a time you request.

The service is available through Jan. 31 and is subject to availability.

By Sandra Block
Photo: TurboTax

What do you give the movie lover that already has everything they need for their home theater: an HDTV, a Blu-ray Disc player and a growing library of discs? How about a bigger Blu-ray player?

Sony's 400-disc Blu-ray megachanger (originally priced at $800 and now found for $600) holds Blu-rays, as well as DVDs and CDs. When connected to the Net, its GraceNote feature loads all the disc information (title, director, cast) for easy searching.

DVD video is upscaled, too. And a one-disc slot lets you play that rental disc that's not destined for the permanent library.

Finding a home for the megachanger -- it's bigger than some audio/video receivers and weighs in at about 30 pounds -- can be a dilemma.  But that's a problem worthy of solving for some home theaters.

Up next on the shopping guide: digital cameras with unexpected extras.

By Mike Snider
Photo: Sony

Twitter has spawned 50,000 applications ... FCC plans for tackling net neutrality draw fire ... Text messages playing greater role in divorce cases ... eBay's latest competition ... iPhone apps to help parents watch their kids ... Free apps prompt top GPS device makers to slash prices ... Droid named Time magazine's gadget of the year ... Finally, HD radios getting smaller.

By Brett Molina

Dell announced today that it has generated more than $6.5 million in sales via Twitter microblogs.

Dell has set up social network accounts and made some 3 million direct connections with users of Twitter,  Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut, Flickr and YouTube, says Manish Mehta, Dell's vice president of social media and community.

The PC maker has culled one million Twitter followers, and has tripled revenues coming in from Tweeted offers for Dell PCs in the past year, doing business in a dozen countries. Though a fraction of the company’s overall revenues, $6.5 million is viewed by the company as a significant new channel to reach customers, says Mehta.

By Byron Acohido
Photo: Dell

Google's Chrome browser is finally available for the Mac. More than  a year after the browser first launched, and many updates later, a link to download the Google Chrome browser went up Tuesday morning on the company blog.

"it took longer than we expected, but we hope the wait was worth it!" wrote Chrome product manager Brian Rakowski on the blog.

Chrome was developed as a leaner, faster way to get online, and Google's speed tests say opening up websites in Chrome is quicker than on Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari. We'll leave it to you to decide if it enhances the Mac experience.

By Jefferson Graham
Photo: Apple Mac. (Apple)

The folks over at Microsoft Bing claim there is no urgency to overtake Google in the race to instantly integrate Facebook, Twitter and other social network feeds into search results.

“We’re focused on our customers, not the competition," says Adam Sohn, director of Microsoft Bing.

Google is grabbing headlines for its launch yesterday of real-time search. The search king also announced deals with Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and others to pull fresh content on hot topics into Google search results.

Sohn points out that Microsoft -- with very little fanfare -- integrated Twitter feeds into Bing search results last October. The software giant also beat Google to the punch securing deals to incorporate Facebook feeds in Bing search results, he says.

Sohn notes that neither Bing nor Google at this moment can fully integrate Facebook feeds into their respective search results. So, from Microsoft's point of view, Bing beat Google to the punch integrating Twitter feeds; and Bing and Google remain neck-to-neck in the race to integrate Facebook feeds.

Sohn won't say when Microsoft expects to integrate Facebook feeds into Bing search results. "We’re not surprised to see Google joining us in launching a real-time search feature," he says. "This is a new and exciting space and we look forward to ongoing competition and product innovation.”

This is all about trying to win the loyalty of social network users, who flit from one hot topic to the next, and demand search results that can keep up. Incorporating Twitter microblogs into Google and Bing results is cool. But the highest stakes ride on doing the best job integrating feeds from Facebook's 300 million clearly-identified, intensively-engaged users. The search service that does this best stands to win a mother lode of search advertising.

"It’s an arms race for features and functionality," says Kevin Lee, CEO of search consultancy Didit. "Google must innovate to retain its lead and Microsoft must make it to market as quickly as possible.

Lee says both could yet stumble by delivering "poor quality results."  On the other hand, the search engine that delivers high-quality, real-time results "will be looked upon favorably by the influential, heavy searching social network community. "

Sohn vows that "over time, we will tune and evolve the experience to bring the best, freshest, most relevant results to our customers."

By Byron Acohido
Photo: Mark Lennihan, AP

No one would ever mistake the Chumby for your granddaddy’s clock radio. When it arrived nearly two years ago, this Wi-Fi connected contraption broadcast Internet radio stations, Facebook and Twitter status reports, Flickr and Picasa photos, even David Letterman’s Top 10 lists. (Yes, it told the time too.) And though far from perfect, it had something else going for it -- Chumby was adorable and oddly appealing.

Chumby Industries recently unveiled a brand new and equally (and in some respects more) versatile Chumby. But the Chumby One, as it’s called, is no longer cute.

The original Chumby (now dubbed Chumby Classic) is made of squishy soft Italian leather and has the feel of a plush toy or beanbag. It comes in latte, black, pearl or varsity blue.

Chumby One is a made of a sterile-looking white plastic. It looks a little like a small 1970s-ish portable TV. What’s more, the first Chumby had a pair of USB 2.0 ports and stereo speakers. The latest device has a single USB connector and mono speakers. (You can connect stereo headphones.)

Fortunately, not all the comparisons are negative, starting with the price. Chumby One costs $119.95 (or $99.95 under a promotion that runs through November) versus $199.95 for Chumby Classic. The new Chumby can house an optional rechargeable lithium ion battery. There is no such battery option in the first Chumby.

The newer version also has an FM radio tuner which Chumby Classic lacks, plus a volume knob. And it has a more robust internal processor.

Both devices share the same 3.5-inch color touchscreen. Both can deliver more than 1,500 free applications in 30-plus categories, including video clips, games, and everything from Pandora Radio to The Weather Channel. Chumby’s software platform is open to developers.

As before, you activate your Chumby via a nearby computer. You use the computer to choose content that the Chumby displays.

Alas, just as with the original Chumby, I experienced networking hiccups. Though Chumby identified my wireless home network, it failed to connect at times. And even when the connection was successful, the screen displayed geeky information about the number of “bytes” and “packets.” For the average consumer who might otherwise find Chumby chummy, there is nothing cute about that.

Up next on the shopping guide: a 400-disc Blu-ray player.

By Ed Baig
Photo: Chumby

Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt offered a gentle warning Tuesday to Comcast as it plans to take control of NBC Universal: Don’t get cocky about how easy it will be to get executives who run cable systems to work together with colleagues who produce programs or run TV networks.
 
“There aren’t a lot of operating synergies,” Britt told analysts at UBS’ Global Media and Communications Conference. He tried to find them at Time Warner -- which produces movies and TV shows and owns cable’s TNT, TBS, CNN, and HBO -- until March, when the news and entertainment company spun off the cable operation.

Britt discovered that “What I do every day is quite different from what (his former counterpart) Barry Meyer at Warner Bros. does.”  When they tried to work together, the goal was mostly to minimize business risk – not to launch daring initiatives. That meant “you never lose, but you (also) can never win.”

On another front, Britt hinted that the No. 2 cable company will respond to consumer interest in subscribing to channels on an a la carte basis -- where people just get the services they want -- by creating more packages of networks.

“There’s a big gap between pure a la carte and what we have now which is one big package,” Britt says. Since consumers want more choice “we should be responsive to that.”

By David Lieberman
Photo: Britt speaks at the Reuters Global Media Summit in New York, December 1, 2009. (Brendan McDermid, Reuters)

Five of the largest magazine publishers unveiled a major initiative Tuesday designed to help them move their print products to digital media while maintaining the quirks in their design that make them so instantly recognizable.

Conde Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corp, and Time Inc. said they will create an independent venture -- still unnamed -- that will develop open standards they’ll use on devices including e-readers, smart phones, and laptops.

“For the consumer, this digital initiative will provide access to an extraordinary selection of engaging content products, all customized for easy download on the device of their choice,” the venture’s interim managing director, Time Inc.’s John Squires, said in a press release.

The group, whose publications reach about 144.6 million people, says it will welcome other publishers to join. It also hopes to bring in publishers of books, comic books, and blogs.

By David Lieberman
Photo: Time

Boxee to bring Web video to TVs with new device ... Dell's reliance on Twitter pays off with $6.5 million in sales ... A pharmacist in your pocket ... New app lets iPhone users complain about AT&T service ... One million invites for Google Wave sent ... CES expecting smaller crowds this year ... The year's best viral video ads ... Google files lawsuit over work-at-home schemes ... Finally, a microwave with built-in YouTube player.

By Brett Molina

TechCrunch blog founder Michael Arrington had high hopes for the CrunchPad.  His prominent tech website hoped to build the thin, $200 touch-screen computer in partnership Fusion Garage, a Singapore-based electronics manufacturer.  The CrunchPad would let you watch videos, listen to streaming music, catch up on emails and the news and engage in video chat.

But the project recently turned ugly after a year and a half.

Arrington says that shortly before launch, Fusion Garage suddenly informed him that TechCrunch was no longer wanted as a partner.  In a TechCrunch blog post on November 30, Arrington wrote “that the entire project self destructed over nothing more than greed, jealousy and miscommunication.”

He claims that Fusion Garage CEO Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan sent an email on November 17, indicating that “bizarrely, we were being notified that we were no longer involved with the project.”

Today, Rathakrihnan announced plans to bring out the CrunchPad without TechCrunch's help, under a new moniker JooJoo (an African name for “magical”). FusionGarage will start taking orders Friday. Customers will receive the Web-based contraption, Rathakrishnan says, in 8 to 10 weeks.

Arrington is pursuing legal remedies.

Among the areas of contention: who owns the intellectual property for the design of the device. Speaking to reporters today, Rathakrihnan claims that the dispute is “nothing more than that a potential acquisition (of FusionGarage by TechCrunch) that didn’t take place.  The suggestion that Michael or TechCrunch owns [the intellectual property] is ludicrous,” he says. “Michael has a flair for the dramatics…we are confident in our position.” 

Arrington sees it differently, of course. “You come over to my house and bake a cake and bring half the ingredients, whose cake is it?” Arrington  says. “We made joint decisions. They’re coming out with weak excuses as to why they pulled out of this.”

However this may play out in the courts, Rathakrishnan has tough sledding. For one thing, JooJoo will carry a $499 price, well above what Arrington envisioned, and quite lofty in the netbook age.

What’s more, though it has a 12.1 inch capacitive touch screen that takes (according to Rathakrishnan) a mere nine seconds to boot up to the Internet, you’ll need Wi-Fi access for this tablet to do you any good if you’re out and about. The company says the battery will last about 5 hours between charges and the device will have enough storage to “cache” content when you’re using it offline.

You’ll manipulate the screen through finger gestures. Though there wasn’t much of a demonstration -- I peeked at the device via Fusion Garage’s Web conference -- the screen displayed icons for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and CNN, among others. Rathakrishnan says he’s in discussion with publishers and content providers.

Fusion Garage says it has raised $3 million so far and will announce new funding shortly. It’ll need it. Rumors abound that Apple may unveil a tablet that will let you accomplish many of the tasks that Joo Joo will apparently let you do.

And TechCrunch's legal challenges may prove to be expensive.  But whatever their differences are now, even Rathakrishnan concedes that “Michael has helped us create awareness.”

By Ed Baig
Photo: Fusion Garage

NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker may not love scripted dramas and sitcoms at 10:00 PM, when NBC runs Jay Leno’s comedy and talk show. But he had no trouble sticking to the script for Comcast’s deal to buy a controlling stake in the television, movie, and theme park giant from General Electric.

The No. 1 cable operator will make it possible for people to “view their favorite films and TV shows more readily and easily” on cable and new digital technologies, Zucker told Wall Street analysts Monday at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference. “The consumer is the winner out of this. That’s the story we’ll tell to regulators over the next year.”

Comcast also doesn’t have to worry about NBCU’s troubled television and movie operations, he says.

TV stations should see more cash next year as the economy improves, and they sell ads for political campaigns and the Olympics. In addition, his company -- like other broadcasters -- will seek payments from cable and satellite companies that carry programming from stations that NBC owns as well as from its independent affiliates.

He acknowledged that this has been a tough year for Universal Pictures, with disappointments that included Bruno, Funny People, Land of the Lost, and Public Enemies. “They know the mistakes they made,” Zucker said. “They didn’t have commercial titles and paid too much for them.”

He adds, though, that this followed “two of the most successful and profitable years in (Universal’s) history. The glory days go back to last year.”

By David Lieberman
Photo: Zucker speaks during the McGraw-Hill Media Summit in New York, March 18, 2009.  (Shannon Stapleton, Reuters)

Arnold Schwarzenegger has nothing to fear from Philippe Dauman. But the diminutive Viacom CEO was talking like a Hollywood tough guy at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference on Monday when former Disney CEO Michael Eisner asked about the high salaries paid to A-list actors and directors of blockbuster movies.

“That has to change,” says Dauman, whose company owns Paramount Pictures. With the steep decline in DVD sales, “it’s no longer possible for a studio to make a big budget picture, and pay (actors and directors) a huge percentage of gross (revenues from ticket sales) before you recover your costs. They have to share the risk.”

The tough talk pretty much ended there. 

Dauman defended his company’s agreement to provide newly released DVDs to Redbox, which has riled other studios by renting flicks at its kiosks for $1 a day. “We’re going to analyze the data and see where it takes us,” he says.

He said that Viacom’s copyright infringement suit against Google’s YouTube has resulted in “more respect for copyrights” online, although he bemoaned “how long the litigation process can get dragged out by defendants.”

Dauman also stood by Paramount’s decision to yank its movies from CBS’ Showtime and join MGM and Lionsgate in launching a premium cable channel Epix. Although cable and satellite companies yawned at the channel -- it’s only carried by Verizon’s Fios systems -- “we’re working on several other (carriage) deals, yet to be announced.”

Asked what they think about Comcast’s deal with NBC Universal, Eisner demurred: “I just don’t know,” he said. And Dauman? “I’ll endorse Michael’s answer.”

By David Lieberman
Photo: Dauman appears at Paramount Studios on September 8, 2009 in Los Angeles, California.  (Jason Merritt, Getty Images)

In contrast to Comcast and NBC, which see great thing ahead for cable networks, TiVo CEO Tom Rogers -- who used to run cable channels at NBC -- says he sees “a train wreck coming for the broadcast and cable industry on the advertising front.” The reason: paying attention to 30-second ads that interrupt shows “is not the way people elect to watch television” when they have a DVR.

As you might expect, Rogers told Wall Street analysts on Monday that he has a solution: Companies can advertise on TiVo, and make ad campaigns more effective by tapping the massive amount of data that the DVR pioneer collects to show what people watch as well as what they buy.

“To think of TiVo as a DVR company is past history,” Rogers says. With its ad research service, and ability to integrate Internet videos with conventional TV in a user friendly way, “We are a television behavior company at our heart,” he says.

It’s been losing subscribers, though, as cable and satellite companies market DVR services that cost less than TiVo, and offer fewer services.

While it works to turn things around, Rogers says TiVo may soon comfort itself with “over half a billion of cash and no debt” if it wins its patent infringement case against Dish Network, now at a Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. If that happens, then Dish might have to pay as much as $300 million to TiVo.

The companies have butted heads over the issue for the last few years, but Rogers says he thinks the case is “coming to the final chapter.” TiVo recently filed similar patent infringement suits against Verizon and AT&T’s television services.

By David Lieberman
Photo: Tom Rogers, President and CEO of TiVo, speaks at Supercomm 2009 on October 21, 2009 in Chicago, Illinois. (Scott Olson, Getty Images)

Google today formally launched something called "real-time search" leaping ahead of Microsoft Bing in a crucial battle to cement the loyalty of social network users. Starting today, Google has begun to integrate on its search results page up-to-the-minute updates of Facebook and MySpace entries, Twitter Tweets, Yahoo Answers and freshly posted news articles. Google says this will work on iPhones and Android phones too. You can see an archived webcast of Google's announcement here.

To do real-time search, Google cut deals with Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, getting them to contribute content feeds of all fresh data streams put out by these top social networks. Microsoft is working on a similar service that's in beta testing.

Facebook boy wonder CEO Mark Zuckerberg is looking even more like a genius. Back in October 2007, you'll recall, Zuckerberg accepted a  $240 million investment from Microsoft that pushed Facebook's market valuation into the strasophere. But he refused to give the software giant exclusive rights to Facebook content.  And now we know why.  "He has to provide search feeds to all of the search engines because it wouldn't be in his investors' best interest to give the results just to Microsoft, " says Kevin Lee, CEO of search consultancy Didit.

What's at stake here is advertising access to the vast, growing and intensely-engaged social network community. Google and Microsoft are vying to become the search service of choice for social network denizens, says Lee. Facebook, MySpace and Twitter users tend to have short attention spans, yet are passionate about narrow topics -- at least for a few minutes at time.  They want to be able to search the Internet for anyone else chatting or tweeting about the hot topic of the moment.

"The whole point of real-time search is that when a social media discussion about something is moving at high velocity, people are interested in the latest discussion, not something that's 24 or 48 hours old," says Lee.

So Google is moving first to lock-in loyalty of social network users who already use Google 65% of time. However, Microsoft has a ripe opportunity to get people to switch to Bing, which currently gets used about 8% of the time. "Being first doesn't really matter," says Lee. "Whoever provides the most relevant real-time search results has an opportunity to win over the social media community."

This is a seminal confrontation. Search ads accounted for most of the $10.9 billion in online advertising generated in the first half of 2009, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau.

"Search is where the money is," says Matt Rosoff, senior analyst at research firm Directions on Microsoft. "Advertisers are shifting from off line to online spending, but the bulk of that is going to search ads, and the bulk of the search ad spending is going to Google."'

By Byron Acohido
Photo: AFP/Getty Images

News Corp. COO Chase Carey says that he’s prepared to face bitter resistance from cable and satellite owners over Fox’s new demand that they pay a monthly fee to its TV stations and affiliates that carry the broadcast network.

“We need to have a business model that enables us to compete with the ESPNs, TNTs, and USA Networks,” Carey told Wall Street analysts Monday at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference. “We’ll probably have some noise (from cable and satellite companies). But it’s important to us and we’re going to do it.”

All of the major networks are broadly hinting that they might yank television’s most popular shows from cable or satellite systems that don’t agree to pay about $1 a month for each subscriber.

Systems pay fees for cable channels, in some cases several dollars a month for each subscriber. But they usually don't pay for broadcast (over-the-air) channels, such as a Fox affiliate, that they carry.  Instead, they compensate broadcasters by carrying and paying for a related cable channel, such as Fox News.

Carey disputes operators’ claim that they’d have to pass the new costs along to subscribers – potentially raising monthly bills by several dollars a month.

“They’ll panic,” he says. “At the end of the day, it’s not our issue. They’re big and profitable companies.”

By David Lieberman
Photo: Carey attends a party on September 20, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. (Michael Buckner, Getty Images)

Avvo, a new legal advice and lawyer referral portal, has an iPhone app useful for holiday party-goers that gives guidance on whether you've had too much to drink.

The app - Last Call - estimates your blood-alcohol level and determines if it’s safe for you to drive.  It has an extensive drink menu so that you can track each of your drinks, and correlates your size and gender to your alcohol consumption to estimate your real-time, blood-alcohol level and alert you if you are above the legal limit. If you are over the limit, Last Call tracks your location and can find and hail you a taxi. It can even point you to DUI lawyers in your area, if need be.

Avvo is a Seattle-based start-up supplying many free services, including access to  its comprehensive legal directory and a Q&A forum where people can ask real attorneys any DUI or other legal question and receive personalized answers.

"After seeing all of the DUI/DWI activity on Avvo, questions and searches for DUI lawyers in particular, we developed Last Call so that Avvo users could avoid driving under the influence in the first place,"  says Avvo’s Founder and CEO, Mark Britton. "Especially during this time of year, we just want people to be safe.”

By Byron Acohido

Sunbelt Software has a stocking stuffer that's priced right: it's free.

It's called VIPRE Rescue, and it's a deep scanning tool that can neutralize many of the nastiest scareware promos, rootkits and keyloggers lurking on your hard drive and bogging down your PC's performance.

This type of software is a great for the person in your extended family who is your go-to techie fix-it person -- or for yourself, if you'd like to become that person.

"VIPRE PC Rescue makes it easy to wipe out infections on a nearly inoperable computer, often times enabling successful repair, as well as installation of necessary security applications to prevent these infections from happening in the future," says Sunbelt CTO Eric Sites.

If your PC is locked up in a fake anti-virus promo loop, using VIPRE Rescue in a safe mode boot up can at least give you back control of your machine, after which you can run other clean up tools.

Up next on the shopping guide: Chumby.

By Byron Acohido
Photo: VIPRE Rescue